Anthea Roberts and an expert panel are brought together in this lecture to discuss Anthea Roberts' latest book "Is international law international?". International lawyers are accustomed to facing challenges to their discipline. For many years, this was in the nature of a challenge to the existence of international law – ‘“is” international law?’ As international law gradually moved beyond its ontological phase, international lawyers were more commonly confronted with the question, but ‘is international law really “law”?’ Now that many international lawyers have honed their response to this question, Anthea Roberts has moved the debate to the next phase, asking ‘is international law “international”?’ This beguilingly simple question does not give of an easy answer. Instead, Roberts’ book – with this question as its title – develops an original research agenda, dissolving the myth of international law’s ‘universality’ and making a powerful contribution to recent scholarship forging a new field of comparative international law. 

Anthea Roberts is an Associate Professor in the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) at the Australian National University. She specializes in public international law, investment treaty law and arbitration, and comparative international law. Anthea previously taught at the London School of Economics as well as Columbia and Harvard Law Schools. 

Professor Rein Müllerson is Research Professor at the University of Tallinn. He has worked in international law in Estonia, Russia, China and the United Kingdom, including as Professor of international law at King's College London (1994-2009), a member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee (1988-92), visiting centennial professor of the London School of Economics (1992-94), first deputy foreign minister of Estonia (1991-92), the UN regional advisor for Central Asia (2004-05), and a member of the Institut de Droit International, of which he was President (2013-2015). He is the author of over 13 books on international law and politics, including most recently Geopolitics and the Clash of Ideologies: Dawn of a New Order (2017).

Associate Professor Marko Milanovic is Associate Professor of international law at the University of Nottingham. Marko obtained his first degree in law from the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law, his LLM from the University of Michigan Law School, and his PhD in international law from the University of Cambridge. Marko is Vice-President and member of the Executive Board of the European Society of International Law, an Associate of the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights, and co-editor of EJIL: Talk!, the blog of the European Journal of International Law, as well as a member of the EJIL's Editorial Board. He was Law Clerk to Judge Thomas Buergenthal of the International Court of Justice in 2006/2007. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Michigan Law School and at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights.

Dr Devika Hovell (Department of Law, London School of Economics) will chair the event.